Means for feeding fabricated material to a printing press



June 12, 1962 o. MILLER 3,038,721

MEANS FOR FEEDING FABRICATED. MATERIAL TO A PRINTING PRESS Filed July 3, 1961 FIG5 ' INVENTOR. DAV! D MILLER /WFWM United States Patent 3,038,721 MEANS FOR FEEDING FABRICATED MATERIAL TO A PRINTING PRESS David Miller, 141 N. Hewlett Ave., Merrick, N.Y. Filed July 3, 1961, Ser. No. 121,472 2 Claims. (Cl. 271-62) This invention relates to means for feeding to a printing press fabricated sheet material. By fabricated material is meant sheets which have been altered, for instance, by the pasting thereon of pictures or by folding of the sheets.

In many applications, for instance in the Christmas card field, it is necessary to perform printing on sheet material which is not absolutely fiat but which has been fabricated or modified by the addition of pictures, raised decorations, embossing and folding of the sheets. Such modification or fabrication of the material results in one side of a sheet being thicker than the other so that when the sheets are stacked they do not lie flat as ordinary sheets but rather the stack becomes tilted with the thin side of the sheet having a substantial angle to the horizontal.

Since printing presses are designed to feed sheets from fiat stacks, and due to the fact that the fabricated sheets do not present a horizontal aspect to the input feeding means of the printing press, it is practically impossible to obtain any continuous speed with the printing press. One attempt to solve this problem has been the insertion of wedges periodically in the tilted stack in an effort to make the stack substantially level. However, this requires constant man power and reduces the speed of the press, so that it is too expensive.

The present invention solves these difiiculties by providing an inclined chute comprising a pair of side guides and a bottom center support which is adapted to be mounted at an adjustable angle to the printing press. The sheets to be fed are fanned out on the guides of the chute and the angle of the chute is adjusted so that the fabrication of the press which is transmitted to the chute causes the sheets to vibrate down the chute forming a small stack which is substantially level at the printing press and so that the sheets may be picked up with the conventional sheet feeding apparatus connected to the press. A portion of the bottom center guide is spring loaded to facilitate the transmission of the vibrations to the sheets being fed.

Accordingly, a principal object of the invention is to provide new and improved means for feeding fabricated material to a printing press.

Another object of the invention is to provide new and improved means to feed folded sheets to a printing press.

Another object of the invention is to provide new and improved means to feed sheets to a printing press where one of the folds of said sheets is thicker than the other.

These and other objects of the invention will be apparent from the following specification and drawings, of which:

FIG. 1 is a side view of an embodiment of the invention.

FIG. 2 is a plan view of an embodiment of FIG. 1.

FIG. 3 is a detail sectional view taken along the line 33 of FIG. 2.

FIG. 4 is an illustration of a stack of fabricated material having one front thicker than the other.

FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrative of the operation of the invention.

Referring to the figures, FIG. 4 shows a typical stack 1 of folded sheets having one fold thicker than the other, for instance Christmas cards or other special sheets which may have a picture or a raised decoration on one fold. In FIG. 4, the folds on the right hand side are thicker so that when the sheets are stacked on a level surface the stack tilts and the thin sheets on the left hand side form a large angle A with respect to the horizontal. It is necessary to feed the thin folds first into the printing press as they have a uniform thickness, whereas the thick folds may have a thin margin and a raised center portion which cannot be conveniently handled by conventional sheet.

feeding means. Therefore, in order to feed the sheets of the stack 1 into a printing press the folds 2 on the left hand side must be raised to a substantially horizontal position in order to be picked up by conventional printing press feeding means, for instance, vacuum type sucker 3 on printing press P which is oscillated to the position 3' in order to feed sheets into the feed rollers 4 and 5. The vacuum sucker 3 may be operated by a cam linkage consisting of a cam 5 and crank arms 6 and 7. Other conventional sheet feeding means may be used. In conventional operation, when feeding absolutely fiat sheets the flat sheets are placed on a table 8 which rises up to a position under the vacuum sucker 3. However fabricated material, having folds of different thickness, cannot be fed by the table 8 as the thin sheets will not present a horizontal aspect to the vacuum sucker unless wedges or other equivalents are inserted in the stack.

The present invention comprises a pair of curved or angled side guides 10 and 11 having bottom and side portions which are connected together by means of the connecting members 12 and 13 which fit through guides 14 and 15 mounted on the members 10 and 11 with a frictional fit so that the distance between the side guides may be adjusted. The side guides are adapted to be mounted on the printing press by means of clamps 15 and 16 connected to the outside surface of the side guides which are adapted to clamp onto the guide rails 17 and 18 which are connected to the printing press and which are normally used for the lifting table 8. Note that the side guides 10 and 11 are connected to the printing press along a single axis so that the angle of the side guides may be adjusted for the purpose of adjusting feeding of the sheets or blanks. The clamps may comprise threaded studs welded, brazed or otherwise connected to the outside surface of the side guides. The studs extend through slots and guides 17 and 18 and may be clamped thereto by a nut or bracket so that the side guides may be at adjustable angles.

Center supporting members 20 and 21 are connected to the members 12 and 13 respectively with a sliding frictional fit, similarly to the connections previously described. Therefore, the center members 20 and 21 are adjustable between the side members 10 and 11 for the purpose of giving the proper support to the sheets being fed. A third center member 22 is connected to the first two center members 20 and 21 by means of the springs 23 and 24. The main purpose of the spring mounting is to transmit the vibrations from the press to the underside of the fanned out sheets on the feeding chute.

The operation of the device is as follows and is illustrated in FIG. 5. The sheets 25, 26, etc. are fanned out on the feeding chute and the vertical angle B of the feeding chute is adjusted by pivoting the side guides or chute so that the vibrations of the printing press are transmitted to the sheets via the chute comprising the members 10, 11, 20, 21 and 22. Due to the vibration the sheets slide down the chute in overlapping relation as illustrated in FIG. 5 until they come in contact with the edge 30 of the printing press where they form a substantially level stack for presentation to the conventional sheet feeding means. Since the stack 31 in FIG. 5 consists of only a few sheets the diiferent thickness of the folds will not cause the stack to tilt appreciably from the horizontal plane so that the sheets may be picked up from the top of the stack by conventional sheet feeding apparatus, for instance the vacuum sucker 3, or other conventional equivalent devices which are designed to pick up substantially fiat sheets. It is only by keeping the stack 31 to a relatively few sheets that this operation may be achieved. The angle of the chute is then adjusted to maintain the stack 31 at a predetermined level at the speed of the printing press. Additional sheets were manually added to the feeding chute by first farming the sheets out by hand so that they overlapped about A" per sheet and inserting the fanned out sheets under the extending trailing edge of the last sheet on the chute.

With the present means and method it is possible to keep a conventional printing press in continuous operation. With conventional feeding apparatus, due to the different thickness of folds, the press would have to be stopped periodically since only a very few sheets may be stacked without the top of the stack departing from the horizontal plane sufficiently to cause a malfunction of the conventional sheet feeding means.

Many modifications may be made by those who desire to practice the invention without departing from the scope thereof which is defined by the following claims.

I claim:

1. Means for feeding fabricated sheet material to a vibratory printing press of the type having an oscillating lifting feed means comprising a pair of side guides having bottom and side portions, means to connect said side guides, means to mount said side guides on said printing press at an adjustable angle with one end of said guides extending under said oscillating feed means, and center support means extending parallel to and connected between said side guides, said center support means including end members adjustably connected relative to said side guide and a center member, and a pair of springs connecting said center member to said end members whereby vibrations from said press are transmitted through said spring connected member to sheets on said guides.

2. Means for feeding modified sheet material to a vibratory printing press of the type having fiat stack feed means comprising a pair of side guides having bottom and side portions, means to adjustably connect said side guides, means to mount said side guides on said printing press at an adjustable angle with one end of said guides extending under said oscillating feed means, and center support means extending parallel to and connected between said side guides, said center support means including end members adjustably connected relative to said side guides, a center member and a pair of springs connecting said center member to said end members.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,671,688 Staude May 29, 1928 2,785,893 Ford et al Mar. 19, 1957 2,994,527 Garnett Aug. 1, 1961 

